It’s not just travelers who are benefiting from the innovations by the leading car rental companies. Newer companies such as Zipcar are attempting to shift urban centers from car owners and renters to car-sharing members. Their hope is that major cities around the globe will embrace their on-demand mobility model. While this is a popular method in European cities, it will be more difficult to push through in the United States where car ownership is ingrained in the culture. That said, an emphasis on being green has taken afoot in certain segments of the population.

For the companies that didn’t perform well in the survey such as Dollar and Thrifty, it would benefit them to re-evaluate their products and services as it will prevent them from being associated with the worst car rental companies.
___________________________________________________________________________________Gennaro Salamone is the founder and editor of Enduring Wanderlust. Feel free to contact him with questions, comments, or inquiries with reference to contributing an article or photograph for publication.

Comments

I really like the idea of the one-way rentals. Nothing more frustrating than having to drop a car off at an office them pay my way to the airport. Think every company should have an easy model for this.

I’ve had good experience overall with renting. Only one mediocre experience. Won’t name the company, but it was on the lower end of the list.

For me, it has been less about a specific company and more about the location office or counter. I’ve had good and bad experience within the same companies depending on the person at the counter or who answers the phone. At the end of the day, I usually just go with the cheapest car rental.

I find that it’s often the airport that makes a difference. I do a lot of traveling and my auto rental experiences have been influenced by this. My best experiences with car rentals regardless of company were at Chicago (ORD), Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), and London Heathrow (LHR). The worst were at New York (JFK), Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL), and McCarran International (LAS). Sometimes a lot of it is just common courtesy.

Enterprise is the largest car rental company in North America and Hertz is the biggest car rental company in the world. That probably plays a role in their doing so well since part of the criteria requires a lot of car selections and locations.

@Aaron Abbott – I think you would find a difference at ATL with the new rental car center. They now have a train that takes you from the terminal across I-85 to the new car rental center in just a couple of minutes. From there it’s a big parking garage with all of the car rental agencies easily accessible. If you visited ATL a while back it has improved the car rental procedure greatly.

For what it’s worth I prefer National (Emerald Club treatment is great) but use Alamo as well in areas where they are prominent and lower priced (like Florida usually).

The results, which take into account rates, reliability, locations, and vehicle options were not overly surprising as these companies are some of the largest car rental companies. In addition, many of the agencies on the list are at the forefront of new developments in the industry.

I hired a car for 2 days and had to pay 600 euros for warranty. I had to walk 1km to get to the car. The worst is that i got robbed and even i returned the car with a full tank and provided a receipt i was forced to extra for gasoline.
Overall the worst car rental company out there with many hidden charges and awful customer support.

ralliartgreece – I’m really sorry to hear that because I just signed up with Hertz. I signed with them because a similar thing happened to me with Avis when I was in France a couple of months ago. The guy at the counter asked me if I wanted the refuel “option.” I said no, then he told me to bring it back full. I did that and they still charged me for refuelling. So basically I paid for a full tank twice. I complained to them and they wouldn’t budge. They said that they have the option of charging me for refuelling and that was part of my contract. It was a total scam. I had to get a third party to intervene before they gave me some – not all – of my money back.

I have had 3 really unpleasant experiences with Enterprise in the last 2 years. First here in Miami, they said they would deliver the car to our house. They did deliver but we then had to drive the agent 45 minutes through traffic delaying our trip, back to his agency. The car was really dirty, soiled seats, filthy carpets, smelled of stale cigarette smoke. We did not have time to change cars and the agent seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of us so we just took the car. In St. Maartin, the car was such a rattletrap old dirty car I was surprised they could even rent such things but there were no better choices. In California when I returned a rental car, even though you could see the tank was full, they charged me a $10 fee anyway because I did not have my receipt.. will NOT use enterprise ever again… treatment was brusque and dismissive